Iris
by miasnape
Summary: Sometimes you don't know as much as you think. Main character deaths warning. HPSS slash


Iris 

Slash – HP/SS

Summary/Notes – I was feeling melancholy, hence, death of main character warning.

If you're that type of person some tissues would be helpful.

All flower meanings gained from ' cybercom .net /~klb /flowers .html'

We thought we knew.  We all thought we knew, but it turned out that only Snape himself had ever known.  Well, not /ever/ known, but he was the only one who had known /after/ it happened.

When Harry died, the whole magical world mourned.  He died on a Tuesday.  That's something I'll always remember even though Tuesday was never really anything special to me before then.

Everyone was so shocked, because how could someone so strong and energetic have died, in the end, of an illness?  How could he have died so weak and dependent on others when it was so against his nature?

We'd thought that Snape had spent so much time with Harry because he was using him as a guinea pig to test his new potion, but Harry had seemed not to mind those sessions where Snape separated him from us, from his friends, and poked and prodded and turned him into a pin cushion, so we waited until we were out of his earshot before whispering in vitriolic tones about how the man was a menace.

How were we to know that the reason Snape was there so often and doing so much poking and prodding was that he hadn't started his research until Harry developed the disease and he needed material to form theories from; that the only reason he was looking for one was in the slim hope that Harry might hold on long enough for the cure.  It really had very little to do with the others that might get the disease in the future, or worse that we thought, the fame and respect it would garner him.

Snape didn't always go to see Harry because of the research – he went just to be with him.  We always assumed that when he went in to that room it was the same each time.  How were we to know that Harry told him everything under the sun, or that each time Snape left they kissed like (incase) it was the last time they ever did?

When Harry died, Snape was with him, but by then he had given up on using Harry for his research because it was past that point by then.  Or so Harry told us.  How were we to know that he didn't do it because it broke his heart to make Harry hurt any more when they both knew there was no way it was going to work in time?

Snape was with him, which in hindsight was the best thing we could have done for both of them.  Snape was with him when he died, and all we thought about was the fact that we weren't.  We didn't think about how long it must have taken Snape to stop crying, compose himself, and come out to tell us – how were we to know he had cried at all?

Harry's funeral was enormous.  We didn't want to make it big, we knew Harry wouldn't have wanted it that way, but there were so many people who wanted to pay their respects and Snape said that funerals weren't for the deceased, they were for the people who were left behind.  We shot him dirty looks, but we did it anyway.  How were we to know that he was one of the ones left behind, or that Harry had said that bit about funerals to him?

Days, weeks, months after Harry had gone, and Snape was the same as usual, except that he wasn't.  Granted, we never saw him that much – he still taught at the school for the most part, and none of us had reason to go back that often.  I can only recall him at places or events where Harry's name or memory were involved, though it never really occurred to me that that was significant back then.

The day after the funeral, Harry's Last Will and Testament was read.  Snape was there.  He received Harry's diaries and his wand.  We didn't know why.  I'm still not entirely sure that Snape knew why, but I think it's so that Harry knew he'd have something left of him, something no one could question Snape over the meaning of, because he wasn't the one who knew the meaning.  Harry had written a small message for everyone regarding what they meant to him, which he had had the executor read out.  All Harry had said to Snape was, "It's all in the diaries."  I was too wrapped up in my own message to give a second's glance to Snape, and when everyone got up to leave he was gone.  We knew he'd gone because he'd gotten everything he was going to be given.  We didn't know that he'd gotten far more than he'd ever thought he would, and that it was nothing he wanted to share with other people.

A few months after Harry died I went to Hogwarts with Hermione, finally ready to visit Harry's final resting place.  We passed Snape on the way, and when we got there, there were sprigs of acacia and zinnia and a small cypress branch.  I was going to move the branch, replace the flowers with my own.  I wasn't sure what type they were, but they were simple and more beautiful than the ones already there.  Hermione told me that it obviously meant something to whoever had left them there, so we moved them to one side, put ours on the other.  We didn't know they had meanings.  We didn't even know they were Snape's, or that he brought something new every day, cleared the wilting or dead ones away.  Hermione later found out that it meant friendship and concealed love, it meant death, and it meant the mourning of an absence.  It meant that Snape missed Harry more than we knew.

There was a memorial every year, just a small one for people who knew him well.  It was really more of a regular wake, a night to remember his life more than to recall his death.  It tended to be full of laughter and tears, good emotions tinged with sadness as we drank and told stories of what we remembered about him.  Snape came each year, but sat in a corner, said not a word, just listened.  We thought he didn't have any memories, not like the rest of us did.  How were we supposed to know that he had more memories than all of us, that he had known Harry in a way that none of us had?

When Snape died last week, he was found with Harry's wand in his hand.

The cabinet by the bed held the stack of diaries he had gotten from Harry, well read by all appearances, one still open, place kept with his own wand.

His own Last Will and Testament was only a brief notice that all of his possessions were to go to whoever wanted them, the distribution to be overseen by Dumbledore, who let us have the diaries and the wand without a blink of an eye.  It was only when we sat down to look through them that we saw that one of them was Snape's.  We set it aside, uninterested, as we read Harry's writing, looked at pictures and keepsakes he had stuck on the pages.

The first three were pretty standard.  We learned more about Harry than we had known, though; about how he had felt when he 'became' a wizard, as if he hadn't been all of his life; about how it had felt to save the world at eleven, at twelve, at whatever age it was when he had done it yet again; about how much he had cared for us; about when Sirius had died; about when he had discovered the prophecy; about him at school, right up to the end of the summer before his last year at Hogwarts.

The last two diaries were the ones that shocked us.  We read about his changing relationship with Snape; about the first time he had realised the depth of his feelings for Snape; about the time he had told Snape that he loved him; about their first kiss; about their first time together; about how Snape had comforted him when Neville had died and he had killed Voldemort; about the first time Snape told Harry he loved him; about their reasons for keeping it a secret and their use of flowers to communicate discretely; about how Harry had felt knowing he was dying and leaving Severus alone yet again.

We turned to Snape's diary.  He had started it the day Harry's Will had been read, when he had seen how Harry's life had been written down and how it had helped him.  He wrote about his own views of his and Harry's relationship; about how he wished he could have opened up to him more; about how he felt when he died; about how he had mourned Harry; about how he wished he could have told everyone about them; about how much he regretted lost time; about how much Harry had taken with him when he had left and how much he wanted it back.  The last passage had been about the cure he had finally perfected, with a note about how he hoped it would prevent someone from losing their lover the way he had lost his.

We learned more about Snape that day than we had learned about him in the years we had known him alive.  We learned things about Harry that we never would have had they never had their relationship.  We finally knew the real story.

By their final resting place last night, Hermione and I left some flowers.  By Harry's name we left some mountain laurel, by Snape's some hollyhock.  We left the amaranth and rosemary Snape had left last time he came undisturbed and added some lemon blossom, nutmeg geranium, asphodel, and the branch of a cinnamon tree.

We know they'll know what we mean.

THE END

There you go, R&R please!

Xox,

Mia:)


End file.
